Harvey Weinstein Charged With New Sexual Assault Allegation

Harvey Weinstein was charged with another sexual assault count for allegedly attacking a woman at a Beverly Hills hotel in May 2010, Los Angeles prosecutors said Friday. L.A. prosecutors had previously charged Weinstein in early 2020 for alleged attacks on two women seven years ago.

“We are continuing to build and strengthen our case,” L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a statement. “As we gather corroborating evidence, we have reached out to other possible sexual assault victims. If we find new evidence of a previously unreported crime, as we did here, we will investigate and determine whether additional criminal charges should be filed.”

According to prosecutors, this accuser was first interviewed by law enforcement in October 2019 as a potential corroborating witness against Weinstein. Last month, prosecutors said, this woman gave detectives information “confirming that the assault took place within the 10-year-statute of limitation.”

The criminal complaint states that Weinstein “willfully and unlawfully touch[ed] an intimate part of Jane Doe #3, while said person was unlawfully restrained by said defendant(s), Harvey Weinstein, and an accomplice, against the will of said person and for the purpose of sexual arousal, sexual gratification, and sexual abuse.”

Weinstein was convicted on February 24 in Manhattan of third-degree rape and first-degree criminal sexual act for attacks on two women. Weinstein, who on March 11 was sentenced to 23 years, is now in a maximum-security state prison near Buffalo.

Los Angeles prosecutors announced charges against him on January 6 — one day before jury selection began in his New York City trial.

He was hit with one count each of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, and sexual penetration by use of force for allegedly shoving his way into a woman’s hotel room on February 18, 2013, and then raping her.

He was also charged with one count of sexual battery by restraint for allegedly assaulting actress Lauren Young on February 19, 2013. Young said Weinstein trapped her in his hotel suite’s bathroom and then groped her breast. She was among the three women who testified in Weinstein’s New York trial about prior, uncharged “bad acts.”

Prosecutors in L.A. had previously said that they were exploring eight accusations against Weinstein. Three of those allegations were beyond the statute of limitations and couldn’t be pursued, but prosecutors explained at the time that they were still investigating the other three.

The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office also said in today’s announcement that two potential Weinstein cases were “declined for prosecution because the victims did not want to testify against the defendant in this case.”

One of these allegations involves an actress who told police that Weinstein “sexually assaulted her during a business meeting,” according to an L.A. District Attorney’s Office document. The other allegation that won’t be prosecuted appears to refer to Jessica Mann; Weinstein was convicted of raping the actress at a Midtown East hotel in 2013. When Mann testified, she also claimed that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles. Mann was not named in the L.A. paperwork, but it states that “the victim testified in trial in New York accusing the suspect of criminal sexual misconduct in 2013; the defendant was convicted of sexually assaulting the victim there.”

“On March 31, 2020 she said she does not want to participate in additional testimony in Los Angeles due to the risk that it will re-traumatize her,” the prosecutors’ document states.

If convicted of the California charges, Weinstein faces up to 29 years in prison.

Prosecutors in L.A. said on March 23 that they “initiated its request to New York for the temporary custody of defendant Weinstein … to bring him to Los Angeles County to face rape and sexual-assault charges.”